Category Archives: Stress Management

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There are three elements that affect how much success you achieve in business and life.

Your Strategy

Your Mental State

Luck

(Element 3 is greatly affected by elements 1 and 2).

Today I want to talk about optimizing your mental state – and teach you a super simple but astoundingly effective method of improving how you think, so that you are far more successful.

Make this one change and so many parts of your life will improve – the quality of your work, the amount of money you make and your self esteem, just for starters.

The technique is that powerful.

And here it is:

Make the decision that from now on you are going to aim to be the best in the world at your work.

Not just good at what you do, or even great, but literally the best in the world.

If you dare to do this, and follow through with it with conviction, many great things will happen:

1. Your own personal standards will immediately rise.

Holding yourself to a higher standard is crucial to succeeding at a top level. The best in any field simply demand more from themselves.

What’s quite remarkable is that as soon as you commit to becoming the best in the world you will notice the standard of what you do quickly rise… usually within 3 minutes.

2. Your motivation will skyrocket.

When you decide to play at a truly world class level, suddenly work seems much more exciting. Being ‘quite good’ at what you do is nothing to get pumped up about, but being the best in the world is a whole different ball game. It’s vastly more inspiring.

3. You will demand more from those around you.

Your staff. Your suppliers. Even your clients.

The moment you decide that you are aiming to become the best in the world, you will instantly see that in order to achieve that you’ll need to get the team around you to also lift their game. Pronto.

You’ll demand more from them, as well as design different ways you can work together that enables a superior result.

Their results will get better. Really quickly.

4. You’ll start aggressively looking for ways to improve.

Suddenly it will be apparent to you that there are numerous areas of your performance that you’ll need to learn to improve. You’ll start hunting for experts, for mentors, for courses that can take you up level after level, until you reach true elite performance.

All 4 of these things happen when you dare to make the decision to become the best on the world.

Will you get there? Will you become literally the best in the world at what you do?

I have no idea. But I’ll tell you two things:

Firstly, you won’t get there unless you aim for it.

There’s an old Persian saying. “Not everyone who ran after a Gazelle caught it. But he who caught it ran after it.”

And secondly, even if you don’t make it to best on the planet, your results will improve so greatly that in 3 years time you will swear that going for it was one of the best moves you ever made.

I just heard an amazing true story. I thought that you, as an entrepreneur, might find it very useful.

It’s all about the importance of keeping focused when things are extremely stressful in your business.

Getting focused on just the one or two things that will improve your business. The handful of activities that are in your control, rather than worrying about people or situations that you can’t do anything about.

I tell this amazing story here:

Yes the story is about an elite Navy Seal warrior, but it’s totally relevant for anyone like you, who owns their own business.

It’s becoming harder than ever to stay calm and relaxed in the workplace.

Workloads are getting bigger, deadlines are getting shorter.

It’s no wonder workplace stress is at an all time high.

But part of the reason that so many people are feeling so angst ridden about their work is because they have never learned any methods to alleviate their stress.

As a mentor to executives and CEOs worldwide, I see this scenario all the time and in response have developed several powerful techniques for helping anyone to greatly reduce feelings of overwhelm, sadness and tension at work.

Let’s look at several of the best techniques now.

Switch To The Game Mindset

In my experience, there are two primary mindsets people have about their work. The first is the War Mindset. Somebody with this mindset sees work as a battle and themselves as a soldier. It’s hardly surprising then that they often finish their day completely exhausted and defeated by their perceived skirmishes.

The second mindset is the Game Mindset. Executives living this paradigm are just as committed to excellence as the first group, but they see themselves as competing in an exciting and entertaining game. They still try really hard, but they are eminently aware that their doing this for fun as much as money.

Time and time again I have seen people who think this way both outperform the warriors and simultaneously be more relaxed and happier.

If you’re feeling a little worn out by work, consider putting a Post It note on your desk with the word ‘Game’ on it, so you can be reminded to keep this mindset all day long.

You’ll be surprised at what a difference it makes.

Use The ‘Next Right Choice’ Technique

This is a highly effective method of stress reduction taught by the brilliant high performance coach, Dr Dennis Deaton.

When you are stressed at work you take two minutes to mentally visualize yourself making the right choice in that situation. So for example if you are clashing with a colleague, just before you are scheduled to have a meeting with that person you mentally see yourself as being calm, rational, and effective in your conversation with them. It’s a very simple technique that can lead to virtually immediate improvements in performance and reductions in stress.

Try The Breath Release

This is one of my personal favorites. Whenever you are in a high stress situation, take a deep breath and then rapidly exhale, as you simultaneously imagine that particular stress leaving your body.

My personal belief is that mental stresses have corresponding physical components in our bodies. When we physically attempt to expel them there is almost always a dramatic improvement in how we feel.

These are three highly effective techniques for reducing your workplace stress.

Used in combination they can turn even the most stressed worker into someone who is happier, calmer and significantly more effective.

Below are 6 highly effective ways to keep your stress under control, no matter what is happening in your business and personal life.

1. REMIND YOURSELF OF WHAT’S GOING RIGHT.

Usually people are stressed about just one or two areas of their life. If they only took a moment to look at the big picture, they would see that the vast majority of their life is going well. Grab a pen and some paper and write a list of all the stuff that’s going well in your life. (You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how long the list becomes.). Now stick that list next to your computer, so that you see it all day long. Watch how quickly your perspective changes and your mood lifts.

2. GET ULTRA CLEAR ON YOUR TO DO LIST.

Clarity enhances serenity. If you’re stressed by how much you have to do, get precise about exactly what tasks must be done (You’ll often realize it’s less than you thought). Once you’ve created your list put a circle around the truly crucial tasks. Most of the time stressed executives have exaggerated just how much they have to do. Getting it down on paper helps you see that mountain of work may be smaller than you thought.

3. TIDY YOUR ENVIRONMENT.

The renowned personal development guru, Wayne Dwyer, says you can tell the state of a person’s mind by the state of their car. I agree. if you’re feeling overwhelmed one of the most effective strategies is to create order in your immediate environment – car, office, home. As you take charge of your surroundings your feelings of control will increase. And as the esteemed behavioural psychologist Martin Seligman has shown, there’s a strong correlation between feelings of control and well being.

4. TRY THE 3 BREATH RELEASE.

I mentor executives and entrepreneurs from all over the world. Whenever they come to me complaining about stress I get them to do this simple exercise:

Take a deep breath. Then as you exhale imagine all your problems and stress leaving you. Do this just 3 times and I bet your feeling of stressed has dissipated significantly.

5. FOCUS ON HELPING OTHER PEOPLE.

One of the most effective techniques for reducing your stress is to take the focus off yourself. When you start devoting time to helping others around you inevitably spend less time thinking about your own problems. There are several studies from the University of Pennsylvania linking happiness with service to others. It may seem strange to connect the two, but the truth is many people who are stressed in the corporate world are so partly because they are incessantly thinking about their own issues and situation, rather than others. We need to balance the two.

6. TAKE MASSIVE ACTION.

There is a concept in psychology known as Learned Helplessness – failing to respond or act to improve our circumstances. Originally discovered in rats, learned helplessness is also evident in some humans who feel overwhelmed by their roles and responsibilities. They feel that things are so bad there is little that they can do to change things. We have all felt this at some point in our business lives and it is a depressing feeling to say the least.

The cure though is simple. Take action to fix things. By proactively acting to improve our circumstances we regain a feeling of control and possibility. If we continue acting we soon get a change in our situation. Soon our situation improves, which encourages us to act further. A virtuous cycle develops which usually quickly improves our predicament.

The key is to act greatly, taking multiple steps to change things, even if we’re not sure if they’ll work. If we act enough, we will usually see vast improvements in almost any area we focus on.

So next time you’re feeling stressed at work, try one or two of these techniques. You’ll find every one of them is highly effective in both reducing your stress and improving your performance.